Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Research on the authenticity of the Zapruder film has been proceeding at a rapid clip since the symposium on the film, which I organized and moderated at the Lancer Conference in 1996. It includes Noel Twyman, BLOODY TREASON (1998), ASSASSINATION SCIENCE (1998), MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000), and THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2003), all of which I edited. Since the film has been used as the backbone of the cover up from its inception--including the creation of the "blob" of brains bulging forward, the missing right-front cranial mass from the x-rays, the caption for frame 313 in LIFE magazine describing how the direction of the shot was determined by the study of the film, and Abraham Zapruder's appearance on television that evening, using his hand to show a blow-out to the right-front that did not occur--it is extremely fortunate that Doug Horne, INSIDE THE ARRB (2009)--in five volumes--did not follow the advice of some and suppress his research on the film. Indeed, one of the great virtues of Vol. IV is its exposure of film fakery.

ZAPRUDER FAKERY 1 - James Fetzer Part 1

Let me say that Doug Horne has been extremely generous in acknowledging the previous work by Jack White, David Mantik, David Healy, John Costella, and David Lifton, who are among those who have made the most important contributions to establishing that the Z-film has been recreated. After all, anyone who takes for granted that the film is authentic--as have generations of students of the crime in generations past--will be unable to reconstruct what actually happened in Dealey Plaza during the assassination, since some events--such as William Greer bringing the limousine to a halt to make certain JFK would be killed, Motorcycle Patrolman Chaney's motoring forward to advise Chief Curry that he had been shot, and Mary Moorman and Jean Hill's stepping into the street to take Mary's famous Polariod--have been removed, while other events--such as the bulging "blob", the blood spray, and the passengers being thrown forward WHILE THE LIMO WAS ACCELERATING AND THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN PULLED BACK--have been added in. Horne's studies reinforce these discoveries.

I especially like the manner in which Doug Horne encourages other students of JFK to abandon their long-held but provably-false belief in Zapruder film authenticity:

The biggest problem we face right now in the JFK research community are the legions of "old guard" researchers who refuse to face this fact [that the Z-film has been fabricated] and who stubbornly cling to some piece of "bedrock evidence", which in their mind will lead them out of the wilderness if only they study it long enough and can divine its true meaning. For Thompson, Wrone, Weisberg, Groden, and may others, the Zapruder film has been this piece of bedrock evidence for over four decades. I say to the old guard who have continued to insist that the Zapruder film is an authentic and unaltered film in spite of the mounting evidence of its alteration, "Come on over, and see the light." You will feel better for having done so--in fact, it will liberate you. Once you accept the fact that the Zapruder film is a clever (but imperfect) forgery, you are free suddenly to believe the Dealey Plaza car stop witnesses (which include several Dallas motorcycle policemen and Bill Newman); Marily Sitzman; the Kodak laboratory personnel (who all say the original film was slit the evening of the assassination); Marilyn Willis; Erwin Schwartz; Cartha DeLoach; Dan Rather; and the Parkland doctors and nurses. For if you believe the Zapruder film is authentic, you must, of necessity, believe that all of these people are either liars, or incompetent and unreliable witnesses.

Following the lead of Noel Twyman, BLOODY TREASON (1997), who consulted Roderick Ryan, an expert on special effects from the cinema capitol of the world, who told him that the "blob" and the blood spray had been painted in, Doug Horne consulted additional experts on special effects and reported that, "When the 6K scans of frames 313 through 323 were viewed, one after the other on two high resolution video screens in the editing bay, Ned Price (who just happens to also be the Head of Restoration at a major Hollywood film studio) said: "Oh, that's horrible, that's just terrible! That's such a bad fake." His colleague, Paul Rutan, opined: "We are not looking at opticals; we are looking at artwork." (By this, Rutan meant we were not looking at traveling mattes; we were looking at painted visual effects superimposed on top of the original film frames--by inference, he meant aerial imaging.) The film editor concurred with his two colleagues. To say that this was an electrifying moment would be a gross understatement.

The considered opinions of our two film restoration professionals, who together have spent over five decades restoring and working with films of the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s (when visual effects were done optically--not digitally), in that one moment superseded the statements of all those in the JFK research community who have insisted for two decades now that the Zapruder film could not have been altered, because the technology did not exist to do so. Our two restoration experts know special effects in modern motion picture films far better than Josiah Thompson, or David Wrone, or Gary Mack, or Robert Groden, or me, for that matter; and their subjective opinion [better: professional judgment] trumps Rollie Zavada's as well--a man who has absolutely no experience whatsoever in the post production of visual effects in motion picture films. And while Rollie Zavada, a lifetime Kodak employee receiving retirement pay from his former employer, would certain have an apparent conflict of interest in blowing the whistle on Zapruder film forgery if his former employer was involved in its alteration, our three Hollywood film professionals had no vested interest, one way or the other, in the outcome of their examination of the 6Kscans on August 25th of 2009.

Those who do not understand the evidence resist it, but if this had been the only contribution of Doug Horne's research toward a better understanding of the assassination of JFK and its cover up, it would have been worth the price of the volume by itself! I am completely and utterly in awe and admiration for his painstaking efforts and meticulous research on the most controversial aspects of the case, where I believe that it has become impossible to deny that the film is a fabrication and that the cover up cannot be understood--even remotely!--without rejecting the blindfold extended by Josiah Thompson, David Wrone, Gary Mack, Rollie Zavada and their chums and allies, who have held back major advances in assassination research on the basis of their misconceived objections to the alteration of the film. I therefore agree with Bill Kelly in his belief that "the corner has been turned" in relation to the question of Zapruder film alteration. Jack White, David Mantik, Noel Twyman, David Healy, John Costella, David Lifton and I have known it for some time, but there is no substitute for a presentation that anyone with the capacity for objectivity can comprehend! For that--and for his diligence, his dedication, his intelligence, his self-sacrifice, and his professionalism--I congratulate him!